Staring at the Sun
by abstraction
Summary: There's life in the desert, and it's just them. But probably not for long. (Sometimes, it's not just them. Sometimes, it's whatever Icarus X brought back with them.) Lydia/Stiles/Malia, post-apocalypse AU.


Stiles sneezes when he stares at the sun.

"It affects, like, a third of the population," he says easily, waving it off like it's habit. There's a heavy expectant silence that follows, and his lungs fill with that half-angry feeling of wanting the earth to swallow him whole. "Well, you know. Before this," he finishes lamely.

"Right," says Malia. She accepts the smaller things now, in one fell swoop of utter diplomacy. They're beyond the point of setting her progress to scale, seeing where she falls on the line between girl and coyote. She is what she is, and out here there's no need for manners– or so Stiles would have her believe. It makes it easier for him, thinking that he still has control over something, even if it's her, even if nothing really matters anymore.

(He finds comfort in telling her hypotheticals of how to behave, or when. She used to bristle at the assumption that she can't figure it out, that she needs someone to tell her what to do or she's lost, but she understands now. Understands that he is not telling her, he is reminding himself.

He keeps trying to remind himself how to be human.)

Lydia says nothing, just stares into the open sky, the sun burning pink into her cheeks.

"Right," Stiles echoes, stilted. His hands speak for him as he climbs back into the roofless jeep, gesturing half-heartedly in a way that means _I'm sorry_ and _Forget it_ and _I'm so angry_.

It's been a long day, and they have been traveling a long road. Malia slides into the backseat, stretches out with her back to the road and her face to the bright, bright sky. Her feet hang out the window on the driver's side. Lydia is left with shotgun. She pulls herself in, wipes the sweat from her temples with the seat of her palm.

"Hey, little wolf, don't sleep too long. You're hard to wake up if there's trouble," Lydia says to the rearview mirror.

"I'm not a wolf," comes a grumble from the backseat.

"Sure you are," Lydia says with a flat, amused edge to her voice. Stiles turns the engine over and then they're back on the road, heading east. The gas station where they'd managed to fill up the tank gets smaller and smaller in the side mirror, until all that's behind them is dust and heat waves.

"We're all wolves now," says Lydia, too quiet for Stiles to hear. Too loud for Malia to ignore. She makes a disgruntled sound, pulls her feet back into the jeep and flips onto her side. She's asleep after five minutes of bumpy road and the relentless and rhythmless tap of Stiles' fingers on the steering wheel.

The radio only picks up static.

Lydia looks out the open window as they speed toward the horizon. It never gets any closer.

.

.

.

.

In 2016 a rocket with a small crew was launched, going further into space than we've ever been. Contact was lost. Everyone was eventually presumed dead.

Three years later, they burned a hole in the ozone on re-entry into earth's atmosphere. Every channel showed the same three clips, over and over: a small, bright object sailing through the sky; some shaky footage from a fisherman, panning from a shark on a boat deck to the crash of something falling into the ocean, off in the distance; and an official from NASA saying, "Initial reports lead us to believe this may be the _Icarus X_ , and that our crew has finally come back to us."

When they got the rocket open, it was a big production, which it probably shouldn't have been. Only one person had survived. No one could figure out what happened to the rest of the crew, because that last survivor, she just wouldn't stop screaming.

That part makes sense, later.

.

.

.

.

Nights in the desert are frigid. Sometimes, Stiles will leave whatever shelter they've holed up in and walk out into the open, sand white from the weak moonlight and a billion other galaxies burning in the sky above his head, and he'll wonder if this is the closest he'll ever get to being on an alien planet. It looks that way, empty and untouched and vast, too vast for him to see the desert's end. Somewhere inside he thinks it will never end, that they will be stuck on this distant lonely moon once called earth, driving around craters and taking the sight of stars for granted.

Tonight is one of those nights where he stands under the stars and tries not to feel the hole in his chest, but to simply acknowledge it, the crushing nothing, the yawning angry gap between who he is and who he lost. He imagines it as a round, open wound, as if a canon had torn straight through the center of him. It's raw and bloody at the edges of his chest and belly, and he's not sure if it'll ever scab over, if the soul is even worth repairing after going through what it has. He imagines if you stand behind him, you can see the moon like a silver coin through his chest, hear the wind howl softly through his bones.

The pain is constant and distant, a full-body thrum that beats in time to some alien tide. It creeps and recedes through no control of his own. There are moments though, the small ones, the insignificant actions of looking back, of remembering half-truths, of seeing– really seeing –his new family, his strange pack, and in those moments the pain becomes a tidal wave. It floods his lungs and his throat until he's certain that this time, this time he'll drown in it and never come back up. He feels a kind of resigned, aching peace.

The peace is lost when he resurfaces. He always does. Because hands wrap themselves around his face and his shoulders, arms wrap around his chest, and two hushed voices breathe into his ear and his neck that he's alright. That he'll be alright. And he is.

(Malia stays awake during the night as their guardian, shifts into her second skin and curls herself between the chests of her pack mates, feels their hearts beat on either side of her like a metronome.

On the nights when she has to bring Stiles back to their shelter– generally a lean-to of collected wood against canyon rock, or the jeep, and filled with all the blankets they've managed to find –she turns to girl again. He needs to feel her hands and to feel Lydia's hands, always sleepy and warm after Malia has gently woken her.

In their lean-to, in their blankets, in their little universe that consists only of them and their breath and their thoughts, Lydia will let both of them curve their bodies to hers, limbs all woven into each other's space. Stiles will almost always fall asleep suddenly and deeply, as if he's sunk to the bottom of some unknown ocean.)

Sometimes, like tonight, Malia kisses his face, his mouth, his neck, and Lydia's hands find hers, or find Stiles, and together they move in an easy synchronicity. Clothes are lost. Skin is found. They let themselves find each sweet spot, each small release, until they are all of them warm and limber and draped across one another in exhaustion.

Malia drifts for a few minutes before untangling herself, pressing her mouth against whoever is closest, and returning to her night-self. Her guardian self. She hunts for the morning's breakfast and returns just before dawn's light, to lay with them for a few quiet moments before they wake.

The sun, on the other side of the world, starts to float up, making the sky hover between colors, making the air dusky and new. By the time it rises to the horizon, the sky is pink and gold, and Malia makes a humming noise when Stiles' fingers run through her fur.

She listens as her pack, small though it is, murmur and wake like morning birds, stretching themselves into consciousness and leaving to find breakfast half-buried under one of Stiles' old shirts in the jeep. Lydia says something in a low tone that makes Stiles bark with laughter.

The sun rises full and bright. The day will be a hot one, she knows. Just like it has been.

Secretly, she is glad, even as her pack prays for rain.

She sleeps until they wake her.

They go east. 

.

.

.

.

At first, Stiles will admit, part of him was thrilled. This was a zombie apocalypse. This was an actual, real _zombie apocalypse_.

Then people started actually, really dying. And no one could do anything about it.

The novelty wore off pretty fast.

The population of the US dropped so severely and so quickly that it was sanctioned by the UN as a quarantine zone. All of North America followed. Two months after outbreak, the population had gone from roughly 500 million to 5 million. Only 10% of what was left was still human.

The rest were… not human anymore.

Stiles doesn't know what happened to the rest of the world. Everyone stopped reporting.

Anyway, that was around the time everyone he knew had died or disappeared, so he didn't really care. Him and Malia and Lydia had just barely escaped California.

It was easier when they hit desert. The things that _Icarus X_ brought back, whatever they were, they didn't like desert.

Lydia has a theory about that, but Stiles doesn't understand half of it. And anyway, it doesn't really matter.

What does matter is that they're alive. The desert doesn't offer much, but it does provide in moments like this. Protection, isolation.

Stiles used to think that they were living the unlivable back in Beacon Hills. He looks back on it and wants to laugh. He doesn't.

That Stiles is a long, long way from where he is now. 

.

.

.

.

"Hey," Stiles says quietly. "Infected."

He points to their two o'clock, in the distance. They're a few hundred feet from an abandoned strip mall. It's generally a good stop for them, where they will load up with a month's worth of supplies before circling back again. But now there are two dark shapes wandering just beyond the buildings, in the cracked parking lot.

They had come, Malia was guessing, because there was a lingering smell of human that made her nose itch. They normally don't come out this far.

"I thought we covered our scent before we left," Lydia whispers from the backseat. It's late afternoon, and without the jeep blowing cool air at them, the heat begins to stick to each of their bodies like molasses. The sun is gold and ripe for plucking, spilling orange light through the windows. Sweat prickles on Lydia's forehead. Stiles wipes a hand across his brow.

"We must have missed something," he says in a low murmur. "What do you want to do?"

"Kill them," Malia says. "There's only two."

Stiles tries not to think about the last time they had to do this. Tries not to think about dark blood sticking between his fingers. The velcro sound of skin being wrenched apart. He swallows.

"Lydia?" Stiles says.

Lydia thinks about what they have, and what they need. She thinks about the last time they had to do this, how bad it went for Stiles. But she also thinks that if she has to keep skinning and cooking and eating desert animals, if she has to pull fur and gristle from her teeth and wonder if the meat was good or bad– if she has to do all this for another goddamn month without even the stupid, small hope of a fucking chocolate bar, she was probably going to just give up. Just wait for the vultures to take her, if there were even any vultures left.

"I'll get the blow torch," Lydia says. "Do you want the pipe or the bat, Stiles?"

Stiles grips the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles lose all their blood. He sits in the golden heat and sweats and feels the muscles of his shoulders work themselves into knots. Abruptly, he lets go of the steering wheel and sits back.

"It's hot today," he says conversationally. "Better do the bat this time."

"Bat it is," she responds. "Malia?"

"I don't need anything," Malia says. Her eyes burn flame-bright.

"Okay," Stiles says. "Sandwich or split-back?"

"Not enough cover for a long distance split-back," Lydia says. "Cross-wise maybe?"

"I like the sandwich," Malia says. "I can use the second building as cover."

"Sandwich works. Sandwich always works. But they're never any fun," Lydia says, eyes on Malia.

"Not for you they aren't," she grins.

"Okay, pack. Sandwich. And then supplies. Nobody die out there, okay?" Stiles says.

"Got it," Malia says. She leans over to press her mouth to his. His hands slide into her hair, not letting her break away too quickly. "I'll be fine," she whispers against his mouth. "And I'll come back."

"You better," Lydia says. Malia pulls away from Stiles and turns to the backseat. She brings Lydia close and kisses her softly.

"See you soon," Malia says, and then she's out of the car, stalking toward the strip mall entrance, low and predatory.

"We're up, Stilinski," Lydia says. They grab their weapons from the back of the jeep. Stiles pulls on leather riding gloves, caked with dirt and blood. He grips the bat with both hands. They move toward the mall.

The two dark shapes in the distance have spotted them. They're closer than they were before, so Stiles and Lydia can see them a bit clearer. Their bodies aren't humanoid anymore.

"Do you want left or right?" Stiles says. Lydia's at his side, the blow torch held loosely in one of her hands. She pulls sunglasses out of some hidden dress pocket and puts them on, all nonchalance. The dark shapes are growing closer, closer. Moving quickly.

"I get the left one traditionally, don't I?" she says.

"Yeah," Stiles says, resigned. "You do."

"Well, alright then," she says. She stands on her tiptoes and plants a kiss on the corner of his mouth. "Batter's up."

It takes longer than Stiles would like for the creatures to reach them. He prefers for it to start and end as quickly as possible, because the people that had been infected and survived weren't really people anymore. They became hosts for Things. From what he could tell, they were black, spider-like creatures that had legs or mandibles grow from the bodies in strange places. The skeleton was broken and reformed to whatever shape suited the thing inside most. Human faces were fractured and in the wrong place, mouth always gaping open in a silent scream.

They're almost within distance, now, and Lydia grips the blow torch tight. In her other hand the sun gleams bright against a blade.

The figure on the left is smaller, more human-like– or, well, it's still using the human legs to walk. Even though the spine is broken, the upper half of the body bowed over like a fallen tree, it moves stilted and elegant, with two black, sharp legs growing from the neck to help support it as it moves. The body only has one human arm left, and it drags against the ground.

The one on the right– well, that's always Stiles' luck. To get the ones that never really tried to stay human at all. It scuttles crab-like toward them, and bile rises in the back of Lydia's throat.

"Come on," Stiles says between clenched teeth. His hands are shaking from the adrenaline. The infected move faster toward Stiles and Lydia. Sweat stings in Stiles' eyes. There is a small, crouching shape following behind the creatures, but they take no notice.

"COME ON!" Stiles yells, and then they're close enough. He swings hard.

It's over quickly. The bat crunches and cracks against every dark place there is. The black boils and hisses and screams under Lydia's steady stream of fire. And then Malia appears behind them, claws long and sharp, and tears what's left of them apart.

The smell is terrible. Stiles smashes a still-moving mandible under his foot with a few repeated stomps. It sounds like someone eating popcorn. Then there's just them, and the sun, and the bodies starting to bubble in the heat.

"Told you we should do the sandwich," Malia says, smug. There's blood in her hair and across her cheek. "Hey, anyone hungry?" she says.

"Starving," Lydia says. Stiles can see his reflection in her sunglasses. There's blood on his neck.

"Supplies first, then food. Then maybe some new clothes," Stiles says.

They do just that. 

.

.

.

.

That night, they sleep in the stock room of the mall's cafe. There are still large soft bags of coffee beans in the corners, and the smell of a Sumatran dark roast that hangs in the air is sweet and thick and familiar. It blocks out everything else.

There, in the cool room, with the world outside nothing but an idea and the moon just a light in the sky, Stiles peels the dress off Lydia. He brushes her hair back across her shoulders and kisses down her neck; lays them down and kisses her breasts, her ribs, the soft place under her naval. He eats her out slowly, unhurried, everything hot and wet and torturous.

Malia has already undressed and sits carefully over Lydia, presses her lips over her warm pulse, licks at the spot just under her ear, catches her mouth when Lydia's breathing starts to speed up, her body starting to tremble. Stiles' hands move slowly up her legs; his thumbs caress the insides of her thighs as they shake; he splays his hands across her abdomen, pinning her down while his jaw works, while her toes curl, while whimpers and moans escape from her busy mouth.

Then it's Malia who leans against a cool pillar, her skin erupting in gooseflesh, and pulls Lydia forward between her legs. Lydia teases and licks, nips at the place where her thigh meets her pelvis, takes her time. Lydia prides herself on being the one who can draw things out the longest. Tonight is no different, but Stiles presses forward, kisses Malia like it might be the last time he will ever get the chance to. Stiles always kisses like it's the end of the world, but they can't fault him for it. The world already ended.

Malia makes tiny sounds against his mouth as Lydia works between her legs, and through whatever bond they've built, whatever synchronous beating of blood they understand, Lydia gets to her knees and pulls Malia forward and away from the pillar as Stiles moves smoothly behind her. Stiles' hands grip Malia's hips and pulls her up. He presses against her and she slowly sinks herself onto him, not quite all in one go. She works herself down and Stiles meets her with little thrusts. His head falls back against the pillar, his hair a bird's nest, and Lydia's hands find their way to Malia's ribs. They slide upward slowly, dancing around where her nipples are pebbled in the cool air. She captures Malia's mouth, tries to keep their rhythm slow and easy as Stiles' thrusts get quicker and quicker. Soon, Malia has to break away from Lydia and cry out to each rocking motion, so Lydia's clever fingers move downward and stroke once, twice, three times, and Malia shouts and trembles and Stiles behind her rocks forward before pulling out, pumping his hand quickly and spilling against her warm, sweat-slicked back.

Malia collapses against Stiles' chest, Lydia curled across their legs, and they stay that way for a few long moments as their breathing slows and their sweat dries and their bodies begin to feel the cool air more acutely. They move once Stiles complains about his legs falling asleep.

They use bottled stream water and the cafe's towels to wash themselves; an easy task that probably involves a little too much kissing and licking on Malia's part. They crawl into the small nest they made of blankets and thin pillows and go to sleep.

.

.

.

.

Lydia dreams. They're strange, and vivid, and someone is always trying to speak to her, but the voice is garbled; the words are nonsense.

They will be in Beacon Hills; all of them, her and Stiles and Malia, and Scott and Kira and Liam. Deaton, sometimes. They'll be outside of the school, years ago or days ago or only minutes, and Scott will have a book in his hands and he'll try to give it to her, but she'll tell him she's already read it. (She hasn't).

He'll look sad, he always looks so sad, and Kira will be standing next to him with lightning in her eyes. She will tell Lydia something very important, something that she can never remember once it's been said.

Sometimes she dreams about Allison, or a rocket crashing into the ocean, or the stars blinking out, one by one. She dreams of a great and terrible darkness, and of her mother, and about the day they had to leave Beacon Hills.

Those dreams, though, she will wake from to find Stiles and Malia at her side, smoothing the hair from her face and whispering to her that she'll be okay.

And she'll tell them it's just a dream. Just a dream.

But she knows she's missing something.

There's a book she's supposed to have read.

There's a word she's supposed to have listened to. 

.

.

.

.

(Last time, they had faced four of them, on the outskirts of Las Vegas, overgrown and bursting through their human skins, too many legs and mouths, all of them perverse and what Stiles imagines, in a sort of calm moment before the hysteria, to be a cross between a spider and a bicycle and a nightmare.

One of them had bitten– bitten? clawed? –one of them had gotten him. If he doesn't die, he'll be–

He'll be–

"Our biology isn't strictly human, Stiles. I don't think we _can_ get infected," Lydia explains slowly.

"Yeah, okay, maybe _you_ guys can't, but I'm just– I'm just human, okay? I don't have the claws or the– the teeth, or the freaky death listening or the screaming, I'm just– I'm just blood and bones, Lydia! And I don't know how long this will take. I don't– I don't know if I'm safe. I think I'm dangerous."

"But you're not, Stiles," Malia says. Her hands are up, and so are Lydia's, like they're trying to calm a wild animal. Like he's some kind of wild animal. But he's not.

He's worse.

"I _am_ , okay? I'm dangerous to you! If you can't do it then I'll just– I'll do it myself, okay?" he says, and his voice cracks, finally, the pitch melting, his whole body deflating. He looks tired and angry and frightened. All his sharp edges seem sharper, his elbows and cheekbones and the line of his jaw. His fingers are long and dark with blood. He's still holding Lydia's knife.

The gash in his side sluggishly pumps his warm, red blood. It looks black in the moonlight.

"No," Malia says, and her hands drop to her sides. She looks sad, or confused. "I mean, you're not human."

"What?" he says. "What?"

Lydia takes the knife from his hands, sticky and sharp, and she places it on the ground by her feet, never looking away from him. She takes his shaking hands in hers and he can see the half-moon reflecting in her eyes, and he doesn't understand. Because he's–

"What do you–" he says, but he can't finish, can't speak around his thick tongue, his throat starting to close. His hands clench themselves into fists and Lydia's hands are stroking his back now, or maybe they're Malia's hands, and they're holding him because he can't breathe, because the world is spinning, the horizon tilting dangerously, the sky swinging in great swoops like a summer swallow with stars in its wings. He's not– he's not–

"It's okay, Stiles," a voice says, and he closes his eyes tight, doesn't think about the desert or the blood or the swinging sky– he concentrates on his lungs and the warm pressure of the hands at his back and the whisper in his ear telling him he's okay, and that he can breathe. There's so much air out here, out here in the open, in the open with Malia and Lydia, and he's safe between them.

"You're okay, Stiles," the voice says. "You haven't been human in a long time," it says, and he laughs, a great expulsion of sound that rings in the dark, but it doesn't sound like a laugh. It sounds like a cry.

He's not sure how long he stays there with them, warm between their bodies, hands roaming his back and his shoulders and his arms, and their hushed voices carrying into the night air. And it begins to make a slow, steady kind of sense. A cold sense, that seeps into his head like a deep, dark ocean.

He used to be a fox, once. He used to be full of void.

If that doesn't change you, he's not sure what would.

He lets them stop the bleeding in his side. They wrap it with torn shirts, and bind his bruised ribs. It hurts to breathe, but he's felt that way for a long time now.

He'll have a scar.

But that's not new, either.)

.

.

.

.

Stiles heard his father die over the phone. It sounded far away.

(It sounded like it was coming from inside his own head.)

What he heard was this: "Stiles, son, it's going to be–"

And then nothing.

And then _nothing_.

And then Lydia started screaming.

.

.

.

.

Lydia didn't stop screaming for a long time. Her voice rose and joined countless others until, it seemed, there was a choir of banshees heralding the end of things, letting the sound of their wail ring in every corner of the world.

California was one of the last states to go down, but go down it did. It was spring break. Everyone was home to see their families.

She supposes that can be a blessing and a curse, both. Her mom was on her way home when it crossed state lines. Her dad was on holiday, somewhere in Europe. She's still not sure if he's alive or not.

All she knows is that everyone here is dead.

It's just them, now. It's just them and whatever they find in the desert. Or whatever finds them. 

.

.

.

.

"We can go into the forest," Malia says, not for the first time. "We'd be okay. I'd protect you. I can hunt better in the forest, anyway."

"We can't go into the forest, Malia," Stiles says, also not for the first time. It's been two weeks since their supply run, and they're still making their rounds: Tonopah, Ash Springs, Coyote Springs, Mercury, Bonnie Claire. They circle the desert and make the same stops, looking for more life, listening to the constant radio static, wondering if this is it, but not stopping. Never stopping.

"Why not?"

"Because," he says. His voice sounds broken. He doesn't continue.

Because that would be it. That would be the final step. The acceptance, the resignation. That they are alone, that they are really and truly alone in the world, and this is all there is: their small pack against alien spiders that came for no reason. All of this violence happening for no reason. And somehow it would be giving up. Because they wouldn't find anybody else, even if there was anybody else to find.

They could try to go back to California, but–

"Not yet, Malia," Lydia says softly.

" _Fine_ ," she says, not understanding.

Lydia puts her hand over Stiles' for a moment. It's warm against her own.

Malia turns back to the horizon. It's almost night, and there are things to watch for. So she watches for them, and ignores the way Stiles' hands open and close, as if they're grasping for something he can't see.

She doesn't understand why they can't move to the mountains, to the trees, where they would be safer, without all this open space. The horizon burns into the backs of her eyes, empty and infinite.

They'll all go one day, she knows. When it's time. They have to agree on something, something they can't explain correctly, but it's okay. She can wait.

All she has is time.

.

.

.

.

Stiles dreams about Scott. Dreams about that last day in Beacon Hills, in the raging sea of death and dark and blood. The moon is always full.

In his dreams things change, people change; his house is not his house, it's also a classroom, or the Sheriff's station, but it's _his_ room too, and Scott is there and they're fighting things together and Scott's eyes are red and then the rest of him is too– everything is red, it's pouring out of his neck and pooling in the hollow of his throat, spilling to floor in curtains and spray –and Stiles is still swinging a bat, but sometimes it's a sword, and he keeps swinging and swinging and his arms are so heavy that they move too slowly, like he's wading through syrup; he can't make contact but then he _does_ , finally, and it's a thunderclap, a great and terrible noise and it's done. It's over.

And then all of Scott's blood is gone and he stands, shakily, and holds on to Stiles' shoulder, and smiles.

They leave his room, or the classroom, or the backyard, or wherever it is that they find themselves, and always when they leave a book catches Stiles' eye, bright yellow and red on a shelf or in the grass, waiting patiently.

Stiles can't read it, but he knows what it says: _Resurrection._

When he wakes, sweat clinging to his chest and his neck, soaking his shirt, Lydia next to him sleeping, or Malia outside prowling– he thinks he knows what it means.

It means he wishes Scott were still there. That he could lead them like he used to, effortlessly and truthfully, and that the overwhelming safety Stiles felt with him would come back, would be resurrected in his bones, warm and steady and infinite.

.

.

.

.

(That's not what it means.)

.

.

.

.

Summer arrives with sharp teeth, and it sinks into their necks. Their bodies skew time in strange ways; they stay moving during the hours of dawn and dusk, and they sleep in turns in the oppressive day heat, conserving strength. There's never enough water to drink.

Lydia complains about new freckles every day. Stiles' lips are perpetually chapped. Malia seems comfortable, barely sweating, only worried about her packmates as they get slower and slower. The sun is heavy on their backs and it pushes them down, down, down; pushes them so far that the sand sinks beneath their feet in great lumbering steps, seeming to drain them of energy.

It's time, Malia thinks. Time, now, for them to move to the trees.

In the night, when it's bearable to move, when the air is free to breathe, she lays between them sated and half-naked next to the jeep, and asks them.

"Isn't it time?" she says to the open sky.

Stiles, his arm covering half of her possessively and the rest of him pulling as far away from her body heat as he can, is half-asleep and slow to respond.

"Time?" he sighs, eyes still closed.

"Yes," Lydia replies. Her head is on Malia's shoulder, breath fanning across her throat. She's wide awake.

Stiles rolls onto his side, lets his hand absent-mindedly move in small circles across Malia's skin. His eyes open blearily, and his hair is flat against his head on one side. He looks, a little bit, like the way a child might, Malia thinks.

"Time for what?" he says, voice sleep-thick.

Malia looks from Stiles to Lydia, and sighs. Her gaze turns back to the sky, purple-blue and bright with starlight.

"Time to leave the desert, Stiles. Time to take you into the trees," she says softly.

There's no sound but their breathing. It's a still moment, and Stiles seems frozen in time, his skin pale in the night and his eyes wide and dark.

He has always smelled like earth and citrus, but now it seems bitter. He's afraid.

"Yeah," Stiles says. He says it like a prayer or a curse. Maybe it's both.

"Yeah," he says again, closing his eyes. He settles back into the blanket, lets his body go soft and pliant. "It's time to leave the desert."

Malia smiles. When he sleeps, it's dreamless.

.

.

.

.

They get more supplies. Enough to last up the coast of Nevada and into California. They want to stay in Nevada for as long as they can.

Stiles is driving. Stiles almost always drives, unless Lydia threatens him, or Malia distracts him. Or both.

It's late afternoon and his fingers clutch the steering wheel white-knuckled. They listen to the white noise of the radio static, the strength filtering in and out between the canyons. Malia tries not to smile.

"We should find a place that's still close to the desert. You know, just in case," Stiles says to the horizon. He's wearing Lydia's sunglasses. Lydia is lounging in the backseat, topless, her shirt covering her eyes. The desert, Lydia thinks, has many terrible and disgusting faults, but the sun exposure is great for color. She hasn't had a tan this even in her entire life.

She does have to reapply the 30 SPF they found at a truck stop about every forty minutes, but she's not driving. Stiles is. And every time she does have to reapply, the speed either increases dramatically or they swerve every few seconds. She meets his eyes in the rearview mirror more than once. He looks like such an idiot in her sunglasses.

Malia doesn't correct his driving. She's also too busy staring.

.

.

.

.

That first night, they're closer to the border than Stiles would like, and he offers to stay awake first. Malia and Lydia are woken abruptly with their shoulders shaking and weapons dropped unceremoniously by their sides.

Stiles has his gloves and a pipe. Malia is awake and half-turned in almost the same second, and her war cry echoes across the nearby canyon. Lydia is abruptly, frighteningly awake and so full of adrenaline she thinks she could run ten miles without stopping.

There's just the one, but it's _big_. It looks like it tried to mash another few human arms onto its own spindly black legs, and Lydia almost vomits at the sight. Stiles is screaming and swinging the pipe so hard it looks like his shoulder will dislocate from the sheer force of it. Lydia grabs her knives and stands, throwing them quietly and expertly into the large black mass in the center. Malia jumps to its side, tears her claws against its flesh, then scrambles behind it to do more damage as it screams.

The whole thing is over in about five minutes. It's a long five minutes. Afterwards, Stiles is breathing heavy, his face spattered with tiny drops of blood. Lydia pulls her knives from the thing's body, wipes the blades on her boots and on a nearby patch of dry grass. Malia's hands are bloody, and she's grinning.

"Well, that was terrifying!" she says happily.

Stiles' breathing slows to normal. He's leaning against the pipe like a walking stick. He wipes his face with the sleeve of his shirt and grimaces at the result.

"We should move," Lydia says. "Closer inland, just for the night. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Stiles says, raising his hand.

Malia also raises her hand. Blood slides down her fingers and over her wrist, dripping onto the sand with a soft _pat-pat-pat_.

"We have lake water so you can wash off," Lydia says, and Malia just shrugs.

They move the jeep further inland. Malia shifts into full coyote and walks around their camp site in easy loping circles. Stiles takes a long time to fall asleep, but Lydia's steady breathing eventually eases him into slumber.

Malia's caught them a very fat, very weird bird for breakfast. It's partly eaten. When she finally wakes, she's in the backseat of the jeep, and Stiles and Lydia are bickering.

She listens for a while before yawning loudly, and they stop.

"Any breakfast left?" she asks, and she can tell by their faces in the rearview mirror that there is.

"We wrapped it in one of the blankets," Lydia says. "We cooked it. Sorry."

"That's okay," Malia says, and finds the bird wrapped carefully near the weapons. "It's good either way."

"Thank you for catching it, Malia," Lydia says. She's turned around in her seat, sunglasses just showing Malia's sleepy face back to her.

"Yeah, thanks babe," Stiles says. Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror and she smiles big. 

.

.

.

.

They're cautious that night, but nothing comes. There's no birds inland, either, so they have cactus and some of the canned food they've hidden away.

The day that follows is more of the same. More heat, more driving, more sleeping and bickering and staring at the passing desert in silence.

The following night, something comes. 

.

.

.

.

It's the hazy half-light of dusk, the sun having set too recently for it to be true dark. They'll have to find a good place to cross into California, and then, once they're there– he doesn't know. He's not sure why they've been heading so far north, but Lydia won't let him do anything else. She has a feeling this is where they're meant to go.

They've been a lot better off when they follow Lydia's instincts, so he follows her directions with no complaints. Well, minimal complaints.

It's when his head is half-turned to say something to Malia in the backseat that Lydia screams.

It's not a regular scream. It's a scream that Stiles hasn't heard in months. One that he hasn't heard since–

His foot slams on the brakes. The light is failing but there are shapes moving towards them in the dark. Lots of shapes. Stiles whips his head around, and the shapes are there too. They're everywhere.

They're surrounded.

"Fuck," Stiles says, softly. Then he starts laughing. "Fuck! _Fuck! Seriously?_ "

He climbs out of the jeep to grab something. Anything. His hands grip the cracking leather handle of the baseball bat. Malia is already growling, fangs long and claws sharp. The shapes are vaguely humanoid but that doesn't mean much.

Stiles laughs again, and it sounds desperate and terrible. Lydia is slowly climbing out of the jeep. Her boots don't make much sound in the sand, and she's next to them without Stiles hearing her.

"Well," Stiles says, and his voice is on edge, dangerously close to cracking. "It's been a good ride."

"I love you," Malia says simply and firmly. She says it like it's been carved into stone somewhere– somewhere time and distance can never touch it. "I love you both."

The words hit Stiles in the stomach; they make his throat and lungs burn.

"I, um. I love you, too," he says. "Both of you."

"Yes," says Lydia. "You know I do too, but you need to calm down."

The shapes are closer now– there's five of them. Maybe six. They still look human-shaped.

It takes a few seconds for Lydia's words to filter into Stiles' brain.

"Lydia, what the _fuck–_ " Stiles starts, but then he realizes that the human shapes are still human-shaped. They're humans.

They're _humans_.

"Oh my God," he says, and it's barely audible, but Malia can hear it clearly. The bat slides from Stiles' hands and onto the ground. It rolls and stops against his foot.

Malia breathes in sharply, and then her face changes back to a girl's. "Oh," she says quietly. "It's–"

"Hey Stiles," says a voice, and Stiles' knees buckle. His throat burns and his eyes burn and everything, his whole body, everything is burning, because it's not possible, it's not–

"Malia, Lydia, it's okay. It's me. Hey, Stiles, it really is me," the voice says, and it's cracking. He can hear Lydia crying, because–

Stiles looks up. The dark shape becomes solid and real and very, very close.

"Hey brother," Scott says. His eyes are fever-bright, shining molten red. "It's been a long time."

"Yeah," Stiles says. He grabs Scott's proffered hand and stands. Then he grips Scott in an embrace so strong, and for so long, that he thinks his bones will bend, and he'll stay this way forever. "It's been way too long," he says into Scott's shoulder.

He can feel Lydia and Malia at his back. And then he can feel their arms around him. And around Scott.

The moon is full.

They're home.


End file.
